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Bring your strategy to life by riding a bike 🚲

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Bring your strategy to life by riding a bike 🚲

Jurriaan Kamer
May 2, 2023
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Bring your strategy to life by riding a bike 🚲

newsletter.jurriaankamer.com

Imagine we would approach cycling the same way we would approach many strategic business projects:

  • Decide where you want to go.

  • Analyze and debate the *perfect* steering angle and departure speed to get there.

  • Prepare the bike once, then launch the bike.

How quickly would you fall on your face? I’d say within 10 seconds.

To ride a bike, you need to *steer continuously*. Start riding, sense the balance, then steer and course-correct. It is the only way to reach a destination.

It is no different in business. 

We can’t plan & predict our way into...
... gaining market share.
... becoming the #1 app in the app store.
... changing the culture of an organization.

To achieve those outcomes, we should apply the same principles as with biking:

  • Continuous Steering over Planning

  • Start by starting

  • Sense and respond

  • Try, fail, learn

  • Progress over Perfection


If you’re curious about how to put this into practice, take a look at these earlier posts:

Jeff Bezos’ advice on decision-making will help you accelerate and reduce costs

Jeff Bezos’ advice on decision-making will help you accelerate and reduce costs

Jurriaan Kamer
·
Apr 13
Read full story
Strategic plans are a deception

Strategic plans are a deception

Jurriaan Kamer
·
Mar 14
Read full story

In other news, I just published my first note on Substack Notes. Notes is a new space on Substack for us to share links, short posts, quotes, photos, and more. I plan to use it for things that don’t fit in the newsletter, like work-in-progress or quick questions.

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Bring your strategy to life by riding a bike 🚲

newsletter.jurriaankamer.com
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